Exhausted - elated

The Daily Sail spoke to a disorientated Miranda Merron newly finished from her first solo transat race

One of the challenges of the Route du Rhum is the mixed conditions. The start in November in windlashed northern Europe and ending in the balmy conditions of the Caribbeans.

"It was in three stages," describes Merron. "The first week was heavy going in that storm. During that time I didn’t have time to take stock of what I was doing or that I was on my own because it was a constant [fight for] survival or I was just knackered all the time and having to tack on shifts. And then I got into the storm, and okay that’s not a very clever place to be, but you’re there and you just live with it and you don’t really think about it too much until it’s over. In fact I didn’t think about it until I saw some footage I was trying to send back and it was making me feel slightly queasy watching the footage on my video screen."

On the second night out there was disaster when the masthead wand dropped off leaving her without wind information for the rest of the race. This is important on singlehanded boats as it allows the autopilot to steer to wind angle - most of the pilots used on these boats these days will steer to true rather than apparent wind angle, essential as their acceleration is such that the apparent wind angle moves fore and aft a lot. Instead UUDS was steered solely on compass course for the remainder of the race.

"I had some very vague wind information on the wands at the back, but it’s not accurate and it [the autopilot] can’t drive on it. And it was only really useful for working out the rough apparent angle you were at when you tried to steer in lighter air. I never knew how much wind there was in the storm. So it is quite a hard way to do a transatlantic race."

Remarkably considering the storm and lack of wind instruments she had got UUDS up to fifth place, a highly respectible position for a 10 year old boat in this fleet. Her downfall was the way she tackled the Azores High.

"And it was after that when it got quieter when we started going down the side of the high, that I realised I was actually on my own. And you start becoming conscious of your surroundings and that was almost scarier in itself until I got used to it. But that was a very frustrating period because I knew that I should have been making more effort to go back into the high, but I’ve got this terrible dread of being becalmed – it’s happened before." She says that she should have been braver about gybing into the High and gybing out of it instead of sailing on a just east of south course to avoid its clutches.

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